Finding Balance - Eating, Body Image, and College Life
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As a UW–Madison student, you lead a complicated and challenging life. The pressures of a new living situation, relationships, and demands on time can create changes in exercise patterns and eating habits. This, along with negative body image issues, can result in chaotic and restrictive eating patterns and an overemphasis on exercise. While most people think of eating disorders occurring in white women, many men and people of color are affected as well. Eating disorders occur twice as often in the college population. If you are concerned that you have unhealthy thoughts and habits about eating and/or exercise, or have a friend who does, the following information from University Health Services may be helpful.
Signs
Signs of eating problems or disorders
- Frequently skipping meals
- Excessively focusing on calories and fat
- Worrying about what you eat
- Eating a very limited variety of foods day after day
- Feeling guilty after eating or not exercising
- Often comparing yourself to others about the amount you eat and/or your body shape
- Feeling fat, even though people tell you that you are thin
- Secret food binges and feeling unable to stop
- Temporarily fasting in order to compensate for foods eaten
- Lying about what you eat
- Compensating for eating by exercising excessively, vomiting, or by frequently using diet pills, laxatives, or diuretics
- Feeling dizzy, faint, or cold
- Weight loss with loss of periods
- Frequent headaches, a sore throat, or gastrointestinal problems
- Difficulty concentrating and focusing on your schoolwork
- Avoiding social situations that involve eating
How to begin
Recovery
- Admit you have problems with eating and body image and that you may have an eating disorder.
- Seek help from professionals trained to treat eating disorders.
- Nourish your body with a wide variety of foods and understand how much food you really need.
- Learn how to cope with your feelings without binging/restricting your food intake.
- Value yourself for who you are, not for how you look or for what you weigh.
Change
How to help a friend
- Be available to listen and care.
- Do not comment on your friend’s (or any-one’s) body size, weight loss, or gain. Such comments are easily and often misinterpreted.
- Express concern about your friend’s health and happiness rather than eating behaviors.
- Do not give advice. This can provoke the opposite response and your friend can become defensive.
- Encourage your friend to seek help from professionals. Get help yourself if the stress of the situation is affecting you.
Help
Healthy Eating Services at UHS
The medical and counseling divisions of UHS provide services for students with eating disorders, body image disorders, eating problems, and exercise concerns. Services provided are multidisciplinary, including individual psychotherapy, nutritional counseling, and medical care. Medication may also be recommended as part of the treatment. Often students will have an eating disorder that requires more intensive services than can be provided at UHS. This may include students who:
- Continue to have serious eating and exercise problems despite previous treatment
- Require appointments more frequently than once a week or need to be seen for extended periods
- Show signs of significant physical health risks
- Have additional mental health problems that have not responded to treatment or may need combined substance abuse treatment
Such students can be referred to professionals in the community who have expertise in treating eating disorders. Some students may also need referral for hospitalization or more intensive residential treatment if there are problems that are severe or life threatening. Intensive out-patient and inpatient treatment programs are generally not available in Madison.
Hope
What’s next?
If you are worried about your eating or exercise behaviors, seek professional attention from the resources listed on the back of this brochure. Addressing body image and eating concerns in the early stages generally offers the best chance of working through these problems and becoming healthy again. Most people do recover from eating disorders and return to a healthy outlook about food and exercise.
Resources
University Health Services
Healthy Eating Services
608-265-5600
333 East Campus Mall
Other Resources
Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention, Inc.
800-931-2237
www.adap.org
Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders
847-831-3438
www.anred.com
Something Fishy: Website on Eating Disorders
www.something-fishy.org
The National Eating Disorders Association
206-382-3587
www.nationaleatingdisorders.org
Body Positive:
Boosting Body Image at any Weight
650-321-2606
www.bodypositive.com
